High Throughput Sequencing and the Phylogeny of Family Drosophilidae

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DEB-0129105R. DeSalle & P. O'GradyA grant has been awarded to Drs. Rob DeSalle and Patrick O'Grady of the American Museum of Natural History to investigate evolutionary relationships of flies in the family Drosophilidae, a group of about 3,300 described species. In spite of recent research efforts, systematic relationships of genera and species groups within the Drosophilidae remain unresolved. This is likely due to the rapid diversification of this large group. The proposed work will generate about 60 gene sequences from over 100 species. This will comprise one of the largest collections of nucleotide data, in terms of number of loci and taxa, ever gathered for a phylogenetic study. In addition to being applied to understanding the phylogenetic relationships within the Drosophilidae, these data will also be used to examine the molecular evolutionary patterns and processes acting on the genomes of these species.The Drosophilidae has served as a model system in genetics, evolution, and development for over one hundred years. The recent completion of the Drosophila melanogaster genome sequence, provides us with an unprecidented amount of data which can be used to initiate comparative studies in other drosophild species. The proposed work will make the entire Drosophilidae a model system for molecular phylogenetic studies. Furthermore, the data generated in this proposed work will facilitate the next stage of comparative evolutionary studies - comparative genomics.